Archive for 2003
Breast Cancer Study Finds No Link with EMF Exposure
A study of Long Island women recently found that there was no association between breast cancer and exposure to electromagnetic fields.
The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, examined 576 women with breast cancer and 585 women without the disease. Researchers at Sony Brook University measured the electromagnetic fields in various rooms of the houses of the women, and also mapped the power lines around each house.
Like previous such studies, it found no association between EMF exposure and breast cancer risk. The study also took pains to examine only women who had lived in their houses for at least 15 years, to test if there was any association with long term exposure to EMF.
Dr. M. Cristina Leske, who headed up the six-year, $2.5 million study, said in a press release announcing the results of the study,
The results are reassuring in that residential levels of EMF, such as from electrical wiring in or around the home, were not related to breast cancer. Given these results, we now have valuable information that leads us to conclude that we can now focus on other possible risk factors. Our team is most grateful for the support of the Long Island women, who made our study possible.
Sources:
Study finds no link between breast cancer, power lines. Associated Press, June 25, 2003.
Breast Cancer and Electromagnetic Fields Study. Press Release, Stony Brook University, June 25, 2003.
Ronald Bailey on Depleted Uranium
Ronald Bailey wrote an interesting survey back in March of research on depleted uranium. As Bailey notes, studies from a wide variety of sources fail to find any negative health consequences from depleted uranium despite the anti-DU rhetoric from environmentalists and some on the Left.
Bailey notes, for example, that the European Union looked at what would happen if someone actually ate significant amounts of deplete uranium,
According to a European Union study released in 2001, “most of the ingested DU (between 98% and 99.8%, depending on the solubility of the uranium compound) will be rapidly eliminated in the faeces.” The vast majority of any remaining uranium will be “rapidly cleared from the blood” in a few weeks. Similarly, the majority of inhaled DU dust will also be cleared via the bloodstream and kidneys. The EU report concluded that “exposure to DU could not produce any detectable health effects under realistic assumptions of the doses that would be received.”
Similarly, studies by the European Union and World Health Organization also fail to find any evidence that would back up claims by alarmists such as Helen Caldicott that the use of DU in the 1991 Iraq war constituted America’s second nuclear war. Bailey writes,
Another 2001 report to the European Parliament compared exposures to DU to those experienced by uranium miners and concluded, “The fact that there is no evidence of an association between exposures—sometimes high and lasting since the beginning of the uranium industry—and health damages such as bone cancer, lymphatic or other forms of leukemia shows that these diseases as a consequence of an uranium exposure are either not present or very exceptional.”
The World Health Organization agrees that DU is not a great health risk. Its 2003 fact sheet on the topic declares that “because DU is only weakly radioactive, very large amounts of dust (on the order of grams) would have to be inhaled for the additional risk of lung cancer to be detectable in an exposed group. Risks for other radiation-induced cancers, including leukaemia, are considered to be very much lower than for lung cancer.” Another WHO report found, “The radiological hazard is likely to be very small. No increase of leukemia or other cancers has been established following exposure to uranium or DU.”
The anti-DU rhetoric plays upon people’s fears and misconceptions about anything said to be even remotely radioactive. WHat it doesn’t have on its side is much in the way of evidence for its alarmist claims.
Source:
Nuclear genocide? Ronald Bailey, Reason, March 26, 2003.
Tags: Uncategorized
Are the Odds of an Apocalypse 50/50?
Proving that it’s not just nutcase religious types who are wont to give firm predictions about the end of the world, British astronomer Martin Rees received a lot of credulous news coverage for his claim that human species only has a 50 percent chance of surviving the next 100 years. Conveniently, should such an apocalypse strike it will not threaten sales of Rees’ new book our Final Hour.
Rees’ book appears to be a rehashed version of every other “technology is going to kill us all” book. In the 1960s and 1970s the theme was that previous technologies were somewhat benign, but recombinant DNA technology was a serious threat that could endanger life as we know it. Now the watchword is that recombinant DNA may not have been all it was cracked up to be as a method of doomsday, but nanotechnology and genetic engineer really are the real deal.
As Clive Cookson put it in a review of Our Final Hour,
The flaw in this book, however, is easy to identify and it is a surprising one for an eminent scientist known for his intellectual rigour. Rees outlines a series of Doomsday scenarios, all quite unlikely, and he makes little effort to quantify their probabilities and none to bring them together into an overall risk estimate. His assertion that human civilisation has only a 50 per cent chance of surviving into the 21st century is plucked out of the air without justification.
Another problem is that Rees emphasises the growing vulnerability of humanity to scientific progress, while neglecting the increasing resilience of new technologies such as the Internet. Biotechnology will make it easier to produce deadly germs but at the same time it will offer a huge range of diagnostic and therapeutic defences against them.
Of course adding such provisos doesn’t do as much for book sales as does yelling that the sky is falling.
Sources:
British scientist puts odds for apocalypse at 50-50. Deena Beasley, Reuters, June 9, 2003.
Apocalypse, now? Clive Cookson, The Financial Times (London), May 3, 2003.
Tags: Uncategorized
Man’s Conviction Overturned After FBI Agent’s False Testimony Revealed
In 1992 Anthony Bragdon was convicted of assault with intent to rape and sentenced to 30 years in jail. Bragdon’s conviction was recently reversed by a Washington D.C. Superior Court that found an FBI expert on fiber and hair evidence had given false testimony at Bragdon’s trial.
FBI Agent Michael Malone’s supervisors had been warned by a whistleblower three years prior to his testimony in Bragdon’s case that Malone may have given false testimony in a previous case, but that warning went unheeded.
In Bragdon’s case, the only scientific evidence linking Bragdon to the crime was fibers that were carpet fibers found on the body of the victim. Malone testified in court that the fibers were consistent with the carpet found in Malone’s apartment.
In 1997, an internal Department of Justice investigation concluded that Malone’s testimony to that effect was false and recommended he be disciplined. Instead Malone was allowed to retire in 1999. Not until 2001 did the government notify Bragdon’s lawyers of the problems with Malone’s testimony.
The major problem with Malone’s testimony is that he never bothered to conduct the tests that would have determined if the carpet fibers found on the woman’s clothing were the same as those from Bragdon’s apartment. In addition, Malone claimed that the type of fiber found on the woman’s clothing could only come from a carpet fiber, which was not true, and he failed to disclose that he found other fibers on the woman’s clothing that did not match the carpet in Bragdon’s apartment.
The National Whistleblower Center claims that problems like this could plague as many as 3,000 criminal cases at which FBI agents provided expert testimony.
Source:
Conviction tossed on FBI lab misconduct. Associated Press, May 28, 2007.
DOJ to Open its Brady Task Force Files Overturned Conviction Brings New Questions to Light. Press Release, June 5, 2003, National Whistleblower Center.
Tags: Uncategorized
EPA Ban on Human Pesticide Data Overturned
In 2001 the Environmental Protection Agency issued a moratorium on using data from human tests to formulate acceptable levels of exposure to pesticides. EPA chief Christie Whitman defended the moratorium at that time saying that the human exposure data could not be used until the EPA had thoroughly investigated the ethical and scientific acceptability of such tests.
Representatives of pesticide producing industries sued arguing that the EPA could not issue such a moratorium without first issuing a public notice of its plans and inviting public feedback. On June 3, a federal appeals court agreed and ordered the agency to accept human test data on a case-by-case basis until it establishes a new regulation under existing procedures.
EPA spokeswoman Lisa Harrison told the Associated Press that the decision would not really change much at the EPA as the agency is already on track to create new regulations related to human clinical trials of pesticides. “It actually doesn’t impact us all that much, because we were proceeding on that track,” Harrison told the Associated Press.
Although clinical trials of pesticides are done with willing volunteers, environmental group generally oppose them as being unethical and instead want pesticide manufacturers to focus exclusively on animal toxicity tests. While animal tests are, of course, very valuable, clinical tests with human beings would provide additional and potentially more accurate information about pesticides (especially when used in conjunction with the data from various animal species).
Richard Wiles of the Environment Working Group told the Associated Press,
We hope that the EPA bans the use of human studies by regulation. It’s completely unethical to directly dose humans with pesticides to see what the toxic effects are. We think that’s self-evident.
If the goal is to provide the most accurate information about the relative dangers of exposure to pesticides, this is hardly self-evident at all.
Source:
EPA told to weight human pesticide test data. Elizabeth Shogren, The Los Angeles Times, June 4, 2003.
EPA halt of human test data overturned. Associated Press, June 3, 2003.
Tags: Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Working Group
Cancer Researcher Resigns Amid Fraud Allegations
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researcher Steven Leadon resigned from his position in June amid allegations that he “fabricated and falsified findings.”
Leadon was a professor of radiation oncology and headed up Chapel Hill’s molecular radiobiology program.
In 1998 Science published research by Leadon and four other researchers claiming to show that the BRCA1 gene plays a critical role in repairing damage to DNA. Defects in the BRCA1 gene have been associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.
Leadon was the last author on the paper which Science formally withdrew after a committee at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill judged that its findings were at least in part fraudulent.
Leadon disputes this, however, saying that although the data may be incorrect, there was no fraud involved. Leadon told the Raleigh News and Observer that he is disputing the university’s finding that he fabricated any results. Leadon told The Scientist,
The pathway that we initially characterized is still a valid pathway. I think that some of the data that we had which pointed to the pathway was flawed, but fundamentally the results still stand.
Sources:
N.C. researcher resigns over allegations of fraud. Martha Waggoner, Associated Press, June 14, 2003.
Researcher Resigns Amid Fraud Allegations. HealthCentral.Com, June 14, 2003.
Repairing BRCA1 science. Peg Brickley, BiomedCentral.Com, June 18, 2003.
Tags: Uncategorized
Michael Fumento on Gulf War Birth Defects Study
Michael Fumento wrote an an essay nicely puncturing the hype surrounding a study of birth defect rates in Gulf War veteran. As Fumento notes, press coverage of the study has trumpeted the study as finding that “Birth Defects High in Children of 1991 War Veterans” as the Baltimore Sun put it.
In fact, the study found that the rate of birth defects among children of Gulf War veterans was lower than for the general population. What it did find were a few specific birth defects where the children in its study had a higher incidence. But should this be cause for alarm?
The study looked at 5,000 children born to Gulf war vets. It examined the incidence rates for 48 birth defects born to male and female veterans of the Persian Gulf war.
As Fumento points out, even with a 95 percent confidence interval for the study, purely by chance we would expect there to be at least two specific birth defects categories that have higher incidence than the general population. And what do you know, for children of male veterans, the study found precisely two birth defects — an increased incidence in two types of heart valve defect.
Additionally, Fumento writes,
The researchers did only assign risk ratings to 26 different categories, which is still enough to make two excesses unexceptional. But why only 26 categories? Because in the others there was not a single defect in the Gulf vets’ children.
Similarly, for children of female veterans of the Gulf War, the study found a higher incidence of one birth defect — a genital urinary tract defect — out of the 48 categories examined. As Fumento writes, “And again, for most categories there were no risk ratings because there were no birth defects.”
Fumento is quick to point out that the researchers conducting the study accurately reported their results, but the news media chose to cherry pick the data and only report on the handful of birth defects where the incidence was higher. Fumento also points to a larger study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that looked at 34,000 infants born to Gulf War veterans and found no evidence for an increase risk in birth defects.
Source:
Media Blow Gulf Vet Birth Defect Study. Michael Fumento, Scripps Howard, June 12, 2003.
Tags: Gulf War Syndrome
British Study Finds No Link Between EMF Exposure and DNA Repair
A study published this month in the British Journal of Cancer finds that there is no link between exposure to electromagnetic fields and the ability of cells to repair DNA damage — one hypothesis on how EMF exposure might possibly increase risk of cancer in young children.
Researchers at the UK’s National Radiological Protection Board exposed human blood cells to very strong magnetic fields to see if the exposure would affect the ability of the cells to repari DNA damage. In a press release describing the results, researcher David Lloyd said,
Some studies in the past have thrown up evidence of a weak link between unusually strong magnetic fields experienced in some homes, and leukemia in children. We tried to produce this effect in cells in the lab, but couldn’t find it even using magnetic fields stronger than people would experience in every day life.
This again suggests that there likely is no connection between EMF exposure and cancer. As Lloyd put it, “Studies like ours have so far failed to uncover a pathway by which magnetic fields could cause childhood leukemia — and it’s looking probably that none exists.”
Source:
UK study doubts power line, leukemia link. Reuters Health, June 11, 2003.
Tags: EMF
On Depleted Uranium
Last week the local hometown paper ran a nonsensical op-ed about depleted uranium. The person who wrote the op-ed didn’t even seem to have any idea why the military uses DU, which can be found with a single Google search or even in most of the anti-DU literature. Anyway, this is a response I wrote which appeared in the local paper this week as a rebuttal:
There were numerous errors and omissions in Mary Ann Schwenk’s June 9 op-ed, “Federal bill to ban depleted uranium weapons should be revived.”
Schenk claims that “our government has not informed us as to why they decided to use DU weapons,” but the reason why depleted uranium is used both in weapons and in armor plating is hardly any secret — it is about 70 percent denser than lead which gives it extra stopping power when used in armor and additional penetrating power when used in munitions.
During the first Persian Gulf War, for example, an American tank outfitted with DU armor was able to withstand direct hits from three Iraqi T-72 tanks and not only survive but also disable all three enemy tanks.
As a weapon, DU is primarily used to target tanks. Because shells made of DU are able to penetrate armor much easier than other materials, DU munitions allow American forces to engage the enemy at a range of up to 25 percent further than with weapons made of traditional metals.
But isn’t DU radioactive? Yes, in fact, it is about as radioactive as most dirt. Since DU is actually about 40 percent less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium found in almost all rock, soil and water, it poses the same radioactive risk that most dirt does.
When a United Nations Environmental Program team analyzed soil samples from holes where DU rounds had impacted in Kosovo, for example, they found that most samples had radiation levels within normal ranges and just a small number of samples had slightly higher levels of radiation. As UNEP put it in its report, “Surface contamination in the areas we visited is trivial and does not pose any threat to the environment.”
The major long-term danger from DU is the possibility that large amounts of it would enter the water supply. Since DU is a heavy metal, large-scale ingestion of it would pose potential health risks, and UNEP has recommended the monitoring of groundwater where large numbers of DU shells have been expended.
Depleted uranium is also used in a number of civilian applications including x-ray tubes and as a radiation shield (casks used to store spent nuclear wastes, for example, are typically made out of depleted uranium encased in stainless steel).
The claims that DU is some sinister highly radioactive weapon whose use may constitute genocide under international agreements would certainly have made a great X-Files episode, but the facts simply don’t support such flights of fancy.
Tags: Miscellaneous Health Scares
Are Highway Fatalities on the Rise Thanks to SUVs? No
Writing for TechCentralStation, Iain Murray did an excellent job in April of pointing out some flaws in the way that the latest report from The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on traffic accidents and fatalities was covered.
As Murray notes, a lot of the coverage focused on the increase in the number of people killed while offering up SUVs as the problem. But digging deeper into the study makes one wonder what the fuss was all about.
In 2002, 42,850 people were killed in 38,356 fatal automobile accidents. This compared to 2001, when 42,116 people were killed in 37,795 fatal accidents. So the increase in traffic fatalities was only 734, or a 0.018 percent increase. Much of that was accounted for by the growth in the U.S. population which the U.S. Census Bureau estimates increased by 0.009 percent from 2001 to 2002.
The rest of the difference is likely accounted for by slight changes in driving patterns. As Murray points out, the NHTSA’s statistics show no change in the number of fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled which remained at 1.5 for both 2001 and 2002 (in contrast, in 1991 the figure was two fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled).
Injuries, Murray points out, decreased despite the slight population increase. There were only 103 injuries per 100 million vehicle miles in 2002 compared to 109 in 2001. According to Murray, injury rates have been decreasing since 1995, which is likely attributable to newer cars with more advanced safety features replacing older cars with less sophisticated safety options.
Now here’s where the statistical trickery really comes in. The NHTSA noted that a whopping 59 percent of the increase in fatalities were in accidents involving SUV’s. So of those 734 additional people killed, 434 were killed in accidents involving SUVs. But again, as Murray points out, not only as the nation’s population been increasing, but the number of SUVs has been increasing as well. A decade ago there were hardly any SUVs on the road, whereas today they are everywhere and seem to be multiplying like rabbits. As Murray writes,
There may be a safety issue with SUVs, but it is also possible that reckless drivers who would get into an accident anyway are now more likely than before to drive an SUV. It would therefore be useful to know the number of fatalities per SUV registered, but the NHTSA does not provide this information. It is also noticeable that the number of injuries sustained in SUV, pickup and van accidents declined from 861,000 to 840,000.
I wonder why the NHTSA did not deem it relevant to provide that information?
Sources:
Statistical Traffic Wreck. Iain Murray, TechCentralStation.Com, April 28, 2003.
Annual Projections of the Total Resident Population as of July 1: Middle, Lowest, Highest, and Zero International Migration Series, 1999 to 2100. U.S. Census Bureau, 2000.
Tags: Uncategorized